Hairballs and the Tyranny of Proclivities

By Carl Nelson

“Lying in the shadow of all preference is blindness.”

I suppose I’ve always had the quiet, soft-spoken person’s disquiet with the world, (even though I’m supposed to inherit it) as perhaps many have. It usually takes me a while to work up the resolve to investigate disasters or inflammatory crises. (I like the light, but don’t enjoy the fire.) So, it was with Trump, the Art of the Deal. Published in 1987, I’d put off reading it for years. I’ve continued voting for the man, and am a quite loyal supporter. But perhaps I wasn’t quite emotionally up to experiencing the entirety of the man. My preference to take my humor dry and to sip, rather than to quaff life, had dissuaded me from dipping more than my toe into the rushing waters of Donald Trump’s persona.

However, eventually I dived in and have enjoyed the swim. It wasn’t the recipe of business maxims you might receive from a business academic’s pen. Rather it was like being a Boswell to Trump’s Samuel Johnson. In fact, the book starts as we accompany the Donald through his activities over a week’s time. Hang on! This fellow works from dawn till about 11 at night phoning, meeting, visiting, researching, negotiating… in short nearly all of his waking moments while taking out time only for his childrens’ calls and to golf. He doesn’t do business lunches. (Waste of time.) (And his wife, he has managing properties also.)

The rest of the book is a walk through the creation and completion of the major real estate deals of his life (circa 1987). The energy, force, drive and resolve of the fellow is… a bit unsettling. Not in a bad way. He builds sound structures both financially and physically. He was surely an asset to New York City – and now the country. But just the energy and drive of such a person is frightening to a person of a mild temperament, I’d judge from my own reaction. It is rather like being nearby any very large, vigorous animal capable of great moment. I might enjoy observing but from a distance. (“Would you like a ride?” – “No!”)

On the other hand, I’ve often wondered, (as have a multitude of others), how it is that 30-40% of the electorate can be so impervious to any notion that the administration of Trump was not worlds better in near every respect than that of Biden? Granted, many of them are governmentally employed or reap income from organizations financially tied to Democratic leaning organizations. (And with the DOGE revelations we find that much of Democratic support was astroturfed with our taxes.) Nevertheless, it would seem much more than unwillingness to consider the opposing view. Their view of the MAGA crowd is couched, ay its meekest level, in distaste, and it ramps up from there. It’s as if they view the MAGA crowd as human abominations and a blot on the sun. In short, what is the cause of TDS, the Trump Derangement Syndrome?

TDS seems immune to debate, or rather debate disconnects relationship with the TDS sufferer, oftentimes for good. Even families are split apart. Successful interaction with the TDS sufferer seems dependent more upon whether or not you “get it”. (And with the Democratic crowd, what it is can change diametrically overnight. Example: Elon Musk and Tesla.)

In this I am reminded of an experience we had during the process of adopting our son who was Thai. As part of our preparation, we attended the showing at an Asian center in Seattle of a documentary about the difficulties of families with adoptees who are of a different race, in this case, Asian. In the documentary of this American blended family, everyone seemed to be happily conjoined, when after moving out and getting a good job, the daughter suddenly felt the need to confront her adopted family about their racism and her need for them to see how it had affected her.

They certainly tried.

For the parents and their son it was as if a meteor had suddenly smashed their formerly contented home. The adopted daughter insisted that for things to be okay, it was important that they understand. But when they tried to understand, they were told by the daughter that they never could, not being of her race. Nevertheless, they needed to try to listen. It was a horrible conundrum to foist upon what seemed a quite decent set of parents – especially when one was in the final stages of a battle with cancer. Her adoptive parents needed to “get it”, but of course by (the daughter’s) definition, never could.

Seeing the documentary, my dismissive assessment was that the daughter was a flaming neurotic. Well, easier to say, until it happens to you.

We went on to adopt our Thai son, who was a lot of fun and a great kid. We all got on great. He had a fine high school experience here in SE Ohio until college and the BLM riots. Suddenly, it was as if he didn’t know us. We were racists. We were white. We hadn’t understood what it was like to be him in our world and he suddenly brought up slights he hadn’t mentioned. If we veered from the legacy media’s take on events it was callous indifference with racist underpinnings again. We were rather gob smacked. There was something much large than skin color going on here, but I couldn’t say exactly what. Just that racial division is an incredibly incendiary device, with depths far beyond my fathoming. As Morgan Freeman, the Black actor noted, probably the best way to get rid of racism is to stop talking about it.

Which is rather like the advice St. Paul offered to the Ephesians 4:27 “Do not give the devil a foothold.”

This worked for us – or at least swept it from our household. Rather than engage, we stood our ground, but answered contentious accusations with rather tangential non-sequiturs.

“But that’s racist!”

“…so what’s your point?”

Reflecting upon it currently, it seems that the conundrum the daughter had imprisoned her parents in was actually the one imprisoning her. It was a way of saying to the parents, this is not something you can solve. This is something only I can deal with… like a hairball. As with a cat, it needed to be vomited up, gathered and flushed. An exorcism possibly. And that the whole process was really a difficulty the cat was having with itself, having ingested something indigestible. And like anyone, in their suffering they often will cast bitterness about where the nearest and dearest and caring are the nearest and most available.

I don’t know what happened with the daughter in the documentary but our son gradually worked whatever it was out of his mental digestive tube, and within a year all was back to normal. (We have continued on to lead happy, successful lives.)

My best guess is that the collective pull of racial preference is so overwhelming, that at some point the individual has to decide to which racial group they will give their loyalty i.e. identify. Then the hairball is dislodged. At least this is what I have seen in my personal experience. The torn personality has to choose which racial group to claim affinity. Then, the torment ceases… mostly, I’d suppose.

Likewise people will often have an affinity for the views of one sex over another. It seems natural that each sex with share a natural affinity for the proclivities of their sex. But some children through either divorce or death or estrangement due to cultural factors have been denied the presence of the other sex figure in their lives, and their preferences are skewed. For example:

“In 1960, over 44% of all American households included married parents with children, while slightly over 13% were single with no children. Today, that’s inverted — in 2023, single people living alone and married couples without children outnumbered married-parent households. Single-person households increased more than fivefold, from 6.9 million in 1960 to 38.1 million in 2022.” – USA Facts

Lying in the shadow of all preferences is a blindness. Like the color-blind testing chart where you read the wrong number and are brought around to realizing that you have never seen the color blue – many of us are deficient in the concepts, the mental archetypes, which explain the workings of reality. And how many of these people realize that they can’t see all of reality; that they don’t know what they don’t know, the “unknown unknowns”.

Just as with a divorce, when youth join a very polarized culture, they will also be asked to choose. Are they going to cleave to the group with affinity for either their father or their mother?

As a Facebook contributor describes it: “”It’s not that those who don’t see won’t see; they CAN’T see. So trying to deal with them on the basis of reasonableness or rationality is a fool’s errand from the get. They are fugitives from mental health, and that’s what makes them so dangerous.’ – Mike Gerow

A child raised in a traditional two parent family has the opportunity to acquire their psychic nutrition from both sexes. And like differing foods, they learn to appreciate the taste of each. Whereas the children of single parent households, which are usually raised by the mother, have much less chance to savor the psychic nutrition a father might bring to the unit – and, especially, if the mother is hostile to the divorced father. A child might first not understand the male point of view and when later acquainted, may develop a distaste for the male point of view – especially its harsher aspects. They might not recognize the legitimacy of the father’s point of view, or indeed recognize it at all and instead ascribe it in negative terms – as the deficient, twisted working of the views they do recognize. And they live estranged from knowledge of one half of the human condition, often feeling in allegiance to their more ‘empathetic’ group that “all you need is love”.

Trump would believe, (I think), that a lot more is needed.

Over the past 60-70 years, this dynamic has moved the Overton Window of cultural and political conversation to the left. And is possibly why reasoned argument immediately hoists red flags, as levels of disgust eventually evolve into hatred, which is indigestible and must be vomited up. Cultural discussion leaves the media landscape a mess of mental hairballs. How else could one describe what happens to the arguments fed someone with TDS, only to see what is then coughed back up? What a mess of spin and dissimulation!

I will leave you with the following hairball, posted currently by a Facebook friend. She’s a friendly realtor from the Seattle area where I used to live. The amount of false information this woman carries about in her head to assuage the cognitive dissonance a whiff of reality would produce is gobsmacking… and (judging from the number of signatures acquired) it requires the support of many other believers, just as ardent. Their psyches are downstream of a huge damned up reality. How long before the eggshell reality of their Potemkin Village cracks and sanity floods them?

Ann Estrin-Wassink

I will not be drawn into debate over this post. I am aware of the arguments of people who disagree with the statements below. I am posting this for all those who may be living in fear in this moment so you know you are not alone. (I am adding that I will delete all argumentative comments so please don’t bother. PP)

I want to share this piece in solidarity:

This is where I stand. The 45/47th President, his power hungry cronies taking positions of authority in his Cabinet and administration, and the majority of Republicans in Congress are a real and active threat to me, my way of life, and all or most of the people I love.

Some people are saying that we should give Trump a chance, that we should “work together” with him because he won the election and he is “everyone’s president.” This is my response:

• I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for 8 years and Biden cleaning up his mess…Lies about his legitimacy and hatred for his principles and his attempts to work within the system.
• I will not “work together” to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security and Medicaid.
• I will not “work together” to subvert the Constitution by illegitimately pushing unfit Cabinet nominees through on recess appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate.
• I will not “work together” to build a wall.
• I will not “work together” to persecute Muslims.
• I will not “work together” to shut out refugees from other countries who seek asylum.
• I will not “work together” to lower taxes on the 1% and increase taxes on the middle class and poor.
• I will not “work together” to help Trump use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his family and cronies.
• I will not “work together” to weaken and demolish environmental protection.
• I will not “work together” to sell American lands, especially National Parks, to companies which then despoil those lands.
• I will not “work together” to enable the killing of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people want to get their thrills killing them.
• I will not “work together” to remove civil rights from anyone.
• I will not “work together” to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.
• I will not “work together” to slash funding for education.
• I will not “work together” to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
• I will not “work together” to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.
• I will not “work together” to eliminate the minimum wage.
• I will not “work together” to support so-called “Right To Work” laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.
• I will not “work together” to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that Trump and his supporters are wrong on the facts.
• I will not “work together” to criminalize abortion or restrict health care for women.
• I will not “work together” to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.
• I will not “work together” to put even more “big money” into politics.
• I will not “work together” to violate the Geneva Convention.
• I will not “work together” to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred.
• I will not “work together” to deny health care to people who need it.
• I will not “work together” to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of a “pre-existing condition.”
• I will not “work together” to increase voter suppression.
• I will not “work together” to normalize tyranny.
• I will not “work together” to eliminate or reduce ethical oversight at any level of government.
• I will not “work together” with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators.
• I will not support anyone that thinks it’s OK to put a pipeline to transport oil on Sacred Ground for Native Americans. And, it would run under the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of people. An accident waiting to happen.
• I will not “work together” to legitimize racism, sexism, and authoritarianism.

This is my line, and I am drawing it.

• I WILL stand for honesty, love, respect for all living beings, and for the beating heart that is the center of Life itself.
• I WILL use my voice and my hands, to reach out to the uninformed, and to anyone who will LISTEN:

That “winning”, “being great again”, “rich” or even “beautiful” is nothing… When others are sacrificed to glorify its existence.

Signed: (to my count by 295 fellow signatures)